Ashwagandha

If you are looking for whats hot on the botanical front in 2013, heres the skinny from a longtime observer of the herbal arena: Open your lesson book to the first two pages, and follow after me: A is for Ayurveda and ashwagandha and B is for bacopa.

Thus spake Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of the American Botanical Council, in a conversation with NutraIngredients-USA.

I think there are some botanicals from India that are going to reach a higher level of market acceptance in 2013, Blumenthal said. The two that come to mind are ashwagandha and bacopa.

A is also for adaptogen

Ashwagandha has been marketed as an adaptogen, helping the body to better deal with lifes daily insults. The ingredient, extracted from the root of a forest plant, has been used in the Ayurvedic tradition for promotion of general health, as a support in cases of stress and fatigue, and as an aid in sexual health.

On the ashwagandha front, Ixoreal Biomed has been making a push in the market with its KSM-66 ingredient, which it has been developing for more than 10 years. The Indian company announced self-affirmed GRAS status for the ingredient in the fall of 2012. Like other ashwangandha extracts, KSM-66 is extracted from the root of Withania somnifera. Ixoreal says its proprietary extraction process, which uses water in place of other solvents, yields a pure ingredient with a high amount of bioactives, called withanolides, and also reduces the extracts bitter taste notes. The new regulatory statues combined with a favorable flavor profile means the ingredient will shortly be showing up in a variety of products including cerals, cereal bars, candies, cookies and type I beverages.

Ixoreals ashwagandha competitors havent been standing still, though. In October, NutraGenesis, a Brattleboro, Vt.-based ingredient supplier with a history of experience with Ayurvedic ingredients, obtained a U.S. patent in the area of womens health for an ashwagandha/Indian gooseberry combination called Sendara.The combination pairs two longtime ingredients in the NutraGenesis stable; Sensoril, a branded, multi-patented ashwagandha extract and Capros, a branded form of Indian gooseberry, also known as amla, both of which has self-affirmed GRAS status. The patent covers other combinations of these two components for this use, not just the branded pair. The new pairing will offer unique benefits, according to Tiea Zehnbauer, vice president of sales at NutraGenesis.

We have it positioned as an anti-aging, beauty-from-within product and we also have it positioned as an overall womens wellness product, Zehnbauer told NutraIngredients-USA.

Excerpt from:
Ayurvedic workhorses poised for market breakthrough, expert predicts